Territory
by drakien
Summary: Sara and Grissom investigate a territorial dispute gone awry. PLEASE NOTE: This story contains potentially flammable subject material. Enter at your own risk, and please read the warning at the beginning of the story. Thanks!


Title: Territory

Author: drakien

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Not a damn thing. Except my husband...bought him fair and square.

**A/N:** Please read the following warning before proceeding with the story!

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WARNING: This story contains content that has been deemed controversial in many arenas. The content is the mention of animals used in research. I understand and respect that there are many people out there who have trouble with that sort of thing, and if you are one of those, please hit the "Back" arrow on your browser now. I would prefer not to be flamed about this. Thanks in advance.

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A/N #2: For those of you still with me, thanks for sticking around. I promise to try and make it worth your while! I'd love to know what you guys think. Hope you enjoy it! Please note...if you've read the warning, read the story anyhow, and feel the need to flame me on content, I will be obligated to laugh at your ass.

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Night shift was nearly over when Gil Grissom entered the break room holding an assignment slip. It had been a slow night for the criminals of Las Vegas, and Sara and Greg sat at the table playing cards. Grissom surveyed the room with a frown.

"Where's Sophia?" he asked.

"She left early. Doctor's appointment or something, I think." Greg said.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "Well, we just got a case in that involves road trip."

"Where to?" Sara asked.

"Salt Lake City," he replied. "A hazardous waste management plant got a box that was over their weight restrictions. When they opened it up to divide and repackage it, they got a little more than they bargained for."

"What was it," Greg asked eagerly.

"A body," Sara guessed, her eyes narrowing.

"Correct," confirmed Grissom.

"So why did we get the case," she asked. "Salt Lake City's about 400 miles out of our jurisdiction, isn't it?"

Grissom consulted his notes. "Apparently, the box originated at a local lab." He pulled a coin from his pocket, flipped it up in the air, and then caught it. "Greg, call it."

"Tails," Greg said.

Grissom showed them the coin in his hand. It was heads. "Well Greg, looks like you get to drive to the plant and process the body," he said with only a hint of a grin.

"Aww, man!" Greg exclaimed. Then he looked at Grissom speculatively. "Do I get to take Sara?"

"Greg!" she protested.

"Sorry Greg," Grissom said. "I need her with me to interview the staff at the lab. All you need to do is process the outside of the box, talk with the staff, and pack it up to bring back here. We'll process the body in our labs."

"Next time we do a coin toss, remind me to cheat," Greg muttered, more to himself than to anyone else in the room. He sighed dramatically, and dragged himself to his feet. "I guess I'll see you guys when I get back."

"Bye Greg," Sara said cheerily as she stood to follow Grissom. "Enjoy the ride."

Greg stuck out his tongue at her in a display of petulance before leaving the room. Sara rolled her eyes.

"So," she said, "we need to go talk to these guys, see if anyone knows anything, right?"

Grissom nodded, and Sara looked at her watch. "What kind of lab is it," she wanted to know.

"Antiviral research," Grissom replied. "They specialize in the full range of pre-clinical services for drug development."

"Antiviral, huh?" she asked. "What kind of viruses are we looking at?"

"I don't really see how that's relevant, Sara," he said with a puzzled frown.

She arched an eyebrow. "Grissom, if we're going to be mucking through a lab that works with infectious diseases, especially a place that's employing a potential murderer, wouldn't you like to know what we're dealing with?"

"Point taken," he conceded, as he thumbed through the file again. "Okay, Western Biomedical Research Facility…we should be dealing with the three big 'H's', I think." At her questioning look, he continued. "HIV, Hepatitis, and Herpes. The rest of the viruses are handled in a BSL-3 suite, which we don't have clearance to enter."

"Fantastic," Sara muttered. "Just what I wanted to play with today." She sighed. "Well, we'd better come up with a way to kill an hour or two…a friend of mine worked in a lab similar to that, and it was a rare occurrence if anyone but lab techs showed up before 9am."

"You're probably right," Grissom admitted. "Want to grab a bite to eat then? We can call at nine and make an appointment."

Sara looked at him sharply, her gaze appraising. After what seemed like an eternity to Grissom, she finally replied. "Yeah. Breakfast would be good."

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**Western Biomedical Research Facility**

**9:30am**

"May I help you," the receptionist asked.

"I'm Gil Grissom," he said. "I have an appointment with Dr. Murphy."

"Ah," the receptionist said. "Just a moment, please."

She picked up the phone and dialed his extension. As they waited, they heard one side of the conversation. "Sir, your 9:30 appointment is here…Yes, sir." The receptionist hung up the phone. "He'll be out momentarily."

"Thank you," Grissom said.

After only a moment, a man entered the lobby briskly, and shook hands with them.

"Dr. Grissom," he said. "Very nice to meet you. If you and your partner would follow me, we've got the conference room reserved for our discussions. This way."

He led the way to the conference room, shutting the door behind him. Another man was already occupying one of the chairs, and stood when they entered the room.

"I took the liberty of inviting Dr. Paul Silverton to this meeting. He's the Principal Investigator on contracts that send hazardous materials to the facility you mentioned on the phone," Murphy explained. Silverton extended his hand.

"Pleasure to meet you, Mr…"

"Grissom," he said. "And this is my colleague, Sara Sidle."

"I assume from your demeanor that this isn't a social visit," Murphy attempted to joke as they took their seats around the table.

"Dr. Murphy, I'll get right to the point," Grissom said. "We're here because a hazardous waste shipment from your facility turned up over the facility weight restrictions."

"Really," Silverton asked, seemingly surprised. "I'm not sure how that could have occurred. What was in the box?"

"Before we get into that, could you walk us through the procedure here for packaging the hazardous waste containers?" Grissom asked. "I believe that would help in our investigation."

Silverton glanced at the director for approval, and at his nod proceeded. "A portion of our research here involves non-human primate studies," Dr. Silverton explained. "Very few of the studies run are lethal to the animals, but when one does die, the body is necropsied to identify cause of death, then autoclaved out to eliminate any infectious materials before being shipped out for incineration."

He paused, thinking, then continued. "Our colony here only consists of rhesus macaques, which average about 4 to 10 kilograms. The biggest animal we currently have on-site is only 9 kilos." He frowned. "The only way a box would have come up heavy would be if one of my technicians didn't follow protocol. Our weight limitation is 25 kilos per box, so to assure we don't go over, only one carcass is placed in a shipment carton. How many carcasses were there in this box?"

Grissom glanced at Sara. "Actually," he said, "it wasn't a non-human primate that was found in the box." He paused for effect. "It was a human."

Both Murphy and Silverton sat back in their chairs, shock etched across their features. Murphy recovered first. "Do you know who?"

"That's what we're trying to find out," Sara replied. "Have any of your employees missed work for the last few days?"

"Not in my group," Murphy said, finally shaking off his temporary paralysis. "Paul?"

He frowned thoughtfully. "I don't think I've seen Laura for the last few days. I haven't heard from her, but maybe Donna has?"

At Grissom's questioning glance, Murphy supplied, "Laura Nelson, and her supervisor, Donna Kensington." To Paul, he instructed, "Find out if Donna has heard anything from Laura."

"Of course," he replied, picking up the phone and dialing an extension. They waited in tense silence until the conversation finished.

"Donna hasn't heard from Laura, and her calls to her house have only gotten the answering machine," Silverton said. "Do you think it's her," he asked the criminalists.

"It's too soon to tell," Sara replied. "We've got one of our people on the way to the processing plant now. When he recovers the body, we should be able to get a positive ID."

"What should we do in the meantime?" Murphy wanted to know.

"For right now, keep this quiet," Grissom suggested. "When we ID the body, we'll let you know."

"Thank you," said a subdued Murphy.

Sara and Grissom stood and shook hands with the two men, then showed themselves out.

"So what now," Sara asked as she slid into the passenger seat of their vehicle.

"Well, we're pretty much on hold until the box arrives, and seeing as how the shift ended…" He paused to glance at his watch. "Two hours ago, I suggest we go home and get some sleep."

Sara nodded. After a quiet drive, he dropped her off in the parking lot next to her car.

"See you tonight, Griss," she said with a wave. He waved back with a slight smile and waited until she got in her car to pull away.

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Sara had just gotten her coffee that night when she received a page from Grissom. Grinning, she snagged a second cup, walked down to his office and stuck her head in the door.

"What's up?" she asked as she walked in and set the cup beside him.

Looking up from his paperwork, he smiled. "You just missed Greg," he said. "I sent him home, but we've got to process all of the information he collected at the scene. We'll be waiting on the labs for the other results for a bit, but I thought we'd get a jump-start on reviewing Greg's notes so we'll be ready when Robbins is ready to look at the body."

Sara glanced at her watch. "How many traffic laws did he violate getting there and back, Grissom? Damn!"

He answered her with a slight grin, gesturing for her to take a seat.

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They had nearly finished going over Greg's notes when Grissom's pager went off.

"That's Robbins," he said. "What say we wrap this up, check on the evidence and drop by the morgue?"

"You sure know how to show a girl a good time, Griss," Sara teased.

To his embarrassment, he flushed, but tried to maintain his dignity as he gestured for her to precede him.

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Sara and Grissom entered the coroner's office to find Dr. Al Robbins sizing up a large box sitting on his autopsy table.

"Sending me presents, Gil?" he asked. "Not my birthday."

"Funny," Grissom said. "So how are we going to unwrap it?"

"Well," he said, "I've been looking at it, and I think the best way to preserve the box would be to cut it at the corners to open one of the sides, then slide the contents out. What do you think?"

Sara circled the box, eyeing it carefully. "I think I like that. Since we don't know what's in the bottom, I'd rather do that than try to pull it out the top. Grissom?"

"I agree," he said.

Robbins nodded and pulled open one of the cabinet drawers. Reaching in, he pulled out a utility knife. "I think, Sara, if you can pull the inner bag back from where I'm cutting, we can avoid slicing the bag open."

She nodded, and reached in to grab the red bag. Once she had it secured, Robbins quickly and efficiently made the two cuts to open the sides of the box. Laying down the side, he said, "I'll hold on to the bag, if you two pull the box away. You can set it on the other table for now."

Their actions were carried out smoothly, and they soon stood around the bag that sat on the table.

"Time to open 'er up," Robbins quipped. Delicately, he undid the twist that held the bag closed and pushed it down.

"What the hell?" Sara said.

Removing the outer bag had revealed its contents. Sitting in a plastic tray was a large upright lump, roughly body-shaped. An unidentifiable black substance covered the mass, and it was bound in white autoclave tape. The dark stripes on the tape indicated that the contents had been completely sterilized.

"That's creepy," she said.

At the very top of the form a tuft of blonde hair, complete with a purple scrunchie, stuck out. Looking right below the hair, Sara had seen that the black material had melted to the victims face. Using the head as a reference point, she was able to identify other parts of her body. The victim sat upright in the pan, with her arms taped to knees pulled tight against her chest.

"Well," Robbins said after a moment, "this is a new one for me. What do you think the black stuff is?"

Grissom had been examining it closely. "Initial guess? Trash bag. Not one of the autoclavable kind."

"Yuck," Sara said. "So Doc, what does an autoclave do to a body?"

"Ever thrown a chicken in the pressure cooker?" he asked.

Before she could reply, Grissom cut in. "Probably not." He glanced at her. "Unless you've recently changed your vegetarian stance?"

"You remembered," she said, arching her eyebrow. "I'm impressed." She turned back to Robbins. "To answer your question, I have not thrown a chicken in a pressure cooker, because you will find neither chicken nor a pressure cooker in my kitchen. Care to enlighten me?"

"Short version? Skin detaches from the muscle, and the muscle detaches from the bone. Bones soften, joints will fix in place, but lose cohesion, until it basically falls apart." He looked at Grissom. "We're not going to be able to stretch her out without her coming apart like a Thanksgiving turkey, you realize that? And pieces of her are going to come off with the tape."

Sara winced.

"So long as we can get an ID, I don't really care," Grissom said. "The temperatures the body was subjected to will have negated our chances of getting any recoverable DNA."

"Well," Robbins said, surveying the mass in front of him, "then I guess I'd better get started. I'll try to make a mold of her face, because her nose will come off if I try and remove the plastic. I'll page you when I've got something."

More than two hours passed before the page came. In a stroke of luck, Robbins had discovered that the victim had been wearing a lab coat, which had prevented a large amount of plastic from adhering directly to her skin. The layer of protection had allowed them to identify a distinctive tattoo on her back. In addition, the latex gloves she still wore had served to partially preserve her fingerprints.

"Well," Robbins said, "it wasn't easy because of the plastic, but I managed to identify your vic's cause of death." He gestured to the head, where a section of skin had been pulled back from the skull. "Head was smashed in. Looks like something with a pretty sharp corner. And your murder weapon is broken." He held up a small object with a pair of forceps. "Looks like plastic, but I'll send it along to the lab to be sure. I also made a casting of the impression, so you can take that with you."

"Thanks, Al," Grissom said.

Robbins stopped them as they turned to leave. "Hey Gil," he called.

Grissom turned back.

"Let me know how this one turns out," he requested. "It's…unique."

Grissom smiled, and nodded.

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Walking down the hallway side by side after they dropped the evidence off at the print lab, Sara shot him a sidelong glance.

"So Griss," she said with a smirk, "still maintaining your carnivorous stance?"

"Yes," he said firmly. She just stared at him, and after a pause he added, "Although I am considering a salad for dinner." He paused again, seeming to think something over. "Want to join me?"

Sara was caught off-guard. "Excuse me?"

"You know, food?" he said, displaying hints of the humor that she had assumed was long gone. "I hear it's all the rage these days."

"Really," she said, unable to contain her smile. "Cite your source."

Without missing a beat, he replied, "International Cuisine for the Domestically Impaired, March 2003 issue."

She eyed him suspiciously. "You just made that up."

"Really?"

"Yes, _really_. And since you lied to me, you are **_so_** buying."

He chuckled, placing a hand at the small of her back as they continued down the hall.

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**Western Biomedical Research Facility**

**Conference Room**

**8:30am**

"Dr. Murphy, thank you for agreeing to see us so quickly," Detective Jim Brass said.

"Of course," Murphy replied. His glance darted from Sara to Grissom and back again, then he sighed. "It was Laura, wasn't it?"

"I'm afraid so, sir," Sara said gently. "Furthermore we have evidence to suggest that her death wasn't accidental."

Murphy rocked back in his chair, shock etched across his features. "One of my people did this?"

"Unfortunately, due to the restricted access of the facility, that seems likely," Grissom said grimly.

"We'll need to set up interviews with your staff. Prioritize people who worked closely with her," Brass explained.

"Of course," Murphy said. "And since I assume you'll need it, I'll have one of my people available to escort you through our labs."

"Thank you," Grissom said.

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"So who do we have left?" Sara asked tiredly. They had been conducting interviews for the last few hours, and she could feel a headache coming on.

"Angela Bower," Grissom replied. "She works in the same lab that our victim did."

Sara frowned. "Why wasn't she interviewed with the first group?"

"Apparently," Grissom said after consulting his notes, "she was setting up a time-sensitive experiment and couldn't leave the lab."

"And now?" Brass wanted to know.

"Still busy," he replied. "But since we need to go back there and have a look anyhow, I figured we could take the interview room to her."

Sara nodded, standing up and stretching slightly. "Well, let's go find our tour guide, shall we?"

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"This is the lab where Laura worked," Donna Kensington informed them.

They had been required to don slightly more than their normal latex gloves, and were all now equipped with lab coats and safety glasses.

"And Angela Bower also," Sara inquired.

"Yes. The two shared this hood here," Donna replied, gesturing to the biological safety cabinet closest to them.

Brass remained near the door with Donna, while Grissom and Sara moved over to the hood. Setting their kits nearby for easy access, they began looking for possible murder weapons.

"Hey Griss, take a look at this," Sara called.

She directed his attention to a plastic serological pipette holder affixed to the outside of the hood. It had a chipped corner. Grissom snagged the Luminol from his kit and sprayed the plastic. Neither CSI was surprised when it turned a bright purplish-pink. What they hadn't expected was the purple on the floor. Some of the Luminol spray had hit the ground, and detected blood there. Curious, Grissom sprayed the floor, and the spot grew larger. By the time he finished, there was a large pool of blood beside the hood, as well as some splatters on the surrounding equipment.

"Okay, lets work this out," Sara said. "We know from the position of the head wound that she probably didn't fall. So how did this," she gestured to the pipette holder, "come in contact with her head with enough force to kill her?"

Grissom had been eyeing the setup carefully. He sat down at the hood and reached up to grab the holder that was now near his head. He gave a quick tug, but nothing happened. Frowning, he reached up to grab it with his other hand as well and pulled hard. The holder came off in his hand with enough force to move his chair back slightly.

"Magnetic," he explained, holding it up for Sara and Brass to see.

Before she could reply, another person entered the room. Seeing Grissom with the plastic holder in his hand, she stopped in her tracks.

"Why are these people touching my stuff," she asked Donna tightly.

"Angela Bower?" Brass asked.

"Yes," Angela replied. "And I repeat…why are you touching my stuff?"

"We're here investigating the death of your coworker, Laura Nelson," Grissom explained. "We found quite a bit of blood here around your hood. Do you know how it got there?"

Angela shrugged. "Head wounds bleed a lot."

Donna's eyes widened, and she took a step away from Angela. Angela picked up on the movement and scowled at her.

"Miss Bower," Brass said, "I'm taking you into custody for the murder of Laura Nelson. Come with me please."

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**Las Vegas Police Department **

**Outside the Interrogation Room**

Sara stood in the observation room with Grissom, watching in disbelief. Bower had calmly admitted to killing Laura Nelson. What chilled Sara was her apparent belief that she had been entirely justified.

"She kept touching my stuff," Angela had explained, as if it were a perfectly conventional reason to end another person's life.

They looked on as two officers escorted her out of the room. Brass left the room as well, coming over to stand with the CSIs.

"Have to give the girl credit," Brass drawled. "She'll never be accused of being passive-aggressive." He sighed, "See you guys around, eh?"

Brass turned to follow the departing officers.

"I still can't believe her," Sara said, shaking her head.

"I think I can understand it," Grissom said. When Sara looked at him oddly, he continued. "It's all about territory. Some creatures react violently when someone enters their personal space."

They shared a contemplative moment before Sara murmured, "And some don't react at all."

She left him standing there pondering the meaning of her words as she walked off.

The behavior of the suspect had confounded her; Sara wished that there had been some hint of insanity in Angela's eyes, as an explanation for her behavior, or even a hint of remorse. It would have helped to restore her faith in the species. But there wasn't, and now Sara had to deal with the fact that a well-educated, intelligent woman with no history of psychological infirmity had killed her co-worker in cold blood.

The more she thought about it, the more she came to realize that Angela Bower and Gil Grissom represented two extremes of the same spectrum. And there was a small, guilty part of her that secretly wished that, just once, their supervisor could be a bit more like their suspect.

**Finis**.

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**A/N #3**: Well, hope you guys enjoyed the ride. This story was inspired by occurrences of territory infringement taking place at my lab. I actually do work in an antiviral research lab, and it's loads of fun. Crazy people work in science, so it's never dull. But just ask any scientist…most of us go **insane** when someone touches our stuff. Or moves it. Or takes it and doesn't put it back. I mean, c'mon people! Did you not **see** the urine stains around my hood? MINE! My precioussss…Whoops! Wrong movie. Hehehe! The plot evolved through a series of interesting discussions with my beta (who I do share my hood with, because she understands about things like territory). I think we may have scared my more normal coworkers with our discussions about what would happen to a body if it were autoclaved…


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